Giving Yourself What You Need (Friday Devotional)

Thus says the Lord: Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the Lord. They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land. Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes, and its leaves shall stay green; in the year of drought it is not anxious, and it does not cease to bear fruit.

- Jeremiah 17:5-8

When I finally got serious about running a few years ago, it only took me a few weeks to figure out what routine worked best for me. I’d wake up, give myself an hour to drink a few glasses of water and a cup of coffee, and then start running just as the sun was coming up. This procedure ensured that I started every run hydrated, caffeinated, that I wasn’t running on a full stomach, and that I was running before it got too hot. Once my body, which was still figuring out what this whole ‘exercise’ thing was, got used to the routine, it became a great way to start the day.

But then a few months into my training program, I woke up one day with so much to do that I decided to postpone my run until the afternoon. No big deal, right? After all, I’d been running regularly for a while by that point; what difference was a few hours going to make?

So I worked through the morning, ate a light lunch, and then around 2:00 got my usual urge for a snack. Fitting the stereotype of the fresh-out-of-college male to a T, I reached for the Cheez-Itz in the pantry and ate straight out of the box for about 20 minutes while I worked on the computer, washing it all down with a Dr Pepper. An hour later, I looked at the clock and realized I was running out of time to get my run in, so I took a deep breath and headed out the door with a belly full of junk food, having not drunk any water since breakfast, into the 90 degree afternoon, thinking I would run 3 miles.

I won’t get into the messy details, but let’s just say the story ends exactly the way you think it does—all because I didn’t give myself what I needed to flourish.

In the Book of Jeremiah, God’s children are told exactly what they need to spiritually flourish. Some people, God says, place their trust in the strength and wisdom of flawed, fallible human beings, trusting them above all others. They are like shrubs in a desert, He says, withering away without access to what they need most. But the faithful ones, those who trust God first and foremost, are like trees planted by a stream, drawing richly from the water and producing abundantly as a result.

These two contrasting examples make clear that for us to flourish spiritually, we need to give ourselves what we need, namely faith in God. Trusting God above all others is easier said than done—it’s a lot simpler and more immediately gratifying to indulge in the “junk food wisdom” of other people, those who indulge your worst instincts instead of pointing you to Christ. But when you do so, more often than not you aren’t rewarded with success, just a mess.

In our age of instantaneous communication and social media, you are constantly bombarded with opinions, advice, and hot takes about what you should think, feel, and believe. Faced with this cacophony of voices, you can listen to the shouts of the crowd or to the Word of life. You know which one you require to flourish—the only question is whether or not you will give yourself what you need.